Phones

iPad UK price announced

Techradar have stolen a march on the rest of us and got the official word from Apple on the iPad price and availability here in the UK.

We already know that it will be available to pre-order on the 10th May but added to this we now know the release date is the 28th May:-

iPad UK pricing

Apple’s suggested retail prices are as follows:

£429 (inc. VAT) for 16GB Wi-Fi iPad

£499 (inc. VAT) for 32GB Wi-Fi iPad

£599 (inc. VAT) for 64GB Wi-Fi iPad

£529 (inc. VAT) for 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad

£599 (inc. VAT) for 32GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad

£699 (inc. VAT) for 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad

iPad will be sold through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorised Resellers. The iBooks app for iPad including Apple’s iBookstore will be available as a free download from the App Store on 28 May. Full Press Release is here.

Via Tech Radar

£350 cashback this Bank Holiday at Phone4U with horrible deals

Independent retailer Phones 4u has launched its biggest instant cashback deal ahead of the bank holiday weekend. However, I wouldn’t get too excited.
Customers are being offered instant cashback or trade in up to the value of £350 from 29 April until the end of the bank holiday weekend when they sign up to one of the bank holiday special deals on offer.
The offer is available on the Nokia 5230 and Samsung Tocco Lite when taken out on a massive 24 month contract.
The Nokia 5230 is being offered for £25 a month with 200 cashback and 300 minutes and 3000 texts. The Samsung Tocco Lite is being offered for £35 a month with 300 cashback, 900 minutes and 3000 texts. The amount of cashback on both offers increases when a handset is traded in.
Phones 4u spokesperson, Russell Braterman said: ‘This is a really significant promotion for Phones 4u as its the biggest instant cash back deal we have ever run. We constantly strive to provide the best deals for our customers and are delighted to offer such incredible cash back value for everyone to enjoy this bank holiday weekend!’

It doesn’t take a bargain hunter to realise you are probably better off keeping whatever phone you have and staying far, far away from contracts that last over 2 years with a phone that might last 12 months.

Tesco Mobile Phone shops to pop up on every High Street

Tesco has launched an all-out assault on Carphone Warehouse, with plans to open Tesco ‘Phone Shops’ on every high street and a major push into the contracts market.
The supermarket giant is speeding up the rollout of 500 new phone shops. From this week, it will open three phone stores each week to deliver at least 100 per year. With 107 Phone Shops already open, Tesco Mobile should hit its target of 500 shops by the end of 2013. Tesco anticipates it will create around 750 jobs this year through the rollout, made up of both Tesco staff and external recruitment.

It is estimated up to 3,000 jobs will be created over a three-year period. The first 200 Phone Shops will be in Tesco’s larger Extra stores. A further 300 phone stores will open in Tesco’s superstores and its high street Metro shops. Each will be customised to fit the store’s profile. In an exclusive interview, Tesco Telecoms chief Lance Batchelor told Mobile: ‘We are working out how to put a full service Phone Shop in our Metro stores and we are trialling different ways of doing this. This will give us the ability to be on every high street in the country.’

Tesco is also targeting the contracts market, adding 28 new handsets to its contract range this month. Batchelor forecasts at least 333,000 contract sales in Tesco Phone Shops this year. Batchelor said: ‘With prepay, we were only playing in half the market. Now, with our Phone Shops and the addition of 28 new handsets in our contracts range, we have moved into the whole of the consumer market.’ No commissions are on offer to Phone Shop staff in order to discourage ‘hard sell’ tactics. Tesco is also wooing the networks, with plans to deliver operator upgrades later this year.

LG Ally video is quite amusing

LG Ally is coming to save lives. Making reference to Android apps including Latitutude, OpenTable, and eBay we see some “heroes” in the background of the action in Ironman 2 using the Ally,,, efficiently.

It’s a giggle and a much better ad than we are seeing from the rival’s at the moment.

Windows Phone 7 Q&A re Office Hub

Spotted this interesting Q&A session with Microsoft Senior Product Manager Augusto Valdez about the Office HUB. Everything seems to be in order however there will be no PDF support and this will be require from Third party. I suppose this is no big problem and the device will probably ship with something Adobe-esq pre installed. David K from Tilt Mobility has kindly arranged an condensed the session into a much more readable format. Check it out after the break.

HP Slate cancelled?

A source “who’s been briefed on the matter” reveals that the Windows 7-based Intel-powered tablet from HP has been canned citing that “it’s too power hungry” as the reason for foregoing its further development and public release. Speculation is that a similarly designed HP tablet could be announced later this year with either Google Chrome or Android as its OS. HP’s recent acquisition of Palm also suggests that a webOS-powered HP Slate might be unveiled in the near future as well.

HP hasn’t commented on these new rumors yet though we are hoping to get some sort of confirmation in the coming days or weeks. For now, we’re listing the future of the Windows 7 HP Slate as questionable.

Source techcrunch

Android gets official Twitter app

Already available on the iPhone and BlackBerry smartphones, the official Twitter mobile app is now also available for the Android platform. Twitter for Android just hit the Android Market which features full support for widgets with the ability to view tweets direct from the Quick Contact bar as well as upload images and videos straight from the gallery. As good as it sounds, it’s not perfect though. It lacks support for multiple Twitter accounts and is currently only compatible with Android 2.1 (Nexus One, Droid Incredible, etc) and above devices. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty good first offering albeit restricted to Android 2.1 and above powered handsets, and whatever limitations this version has can easily be addressed in future software updates. For now, those still using an Android 1.6 device will have to content themselves with 3rd party developed Twitter apps for Android or accessing the popular social networking site at mobile.twitter.com via the mobile web browser.

O2 stopped buying the Palm Pre

O2 and Carphone Warehouse have stopped buying Palm Pre phones, Mobile News exclusively reveal. O2 said it had stopped buying the handsets because it ‘has enough to meet the demands’ of its customers. Carphone Warehouse, which bought the Palm Pre directly from O2, confirmed it had also stopped buying the device.
Palm’s Pre handset, which was launched exclusively on O2 in December last year, has struggled to make an impact in the UK market, with retail staff complaining of poor sales.

The news comes on the day IT giant HP announced it was buying Palm for £657m.
An O2 spokesman said: ‘Yes we have stopped buying Palm Pres because at the moment we have enough to meet the demands of our customers.’
In a blog on the O2 website today, general manger of devices Steve Alder had written: ‘When we first announced our exclusive relationship to sell the Palm Pre we talked about how exciting the webOS platform was and how it was a breakthrough in bringing information from lots of different places together.’

Virgin Mobile customer base increases

Virgin Media increased its mobile customer base by 45 per cent in the first quarter of the year compared with the first quarter of 2009. It now has 1,030,900 subscribers with 81,200 net contract additions in the quarter, up 29 per cent. ARPU during the period was up 4.3 per cent to £13.70, while revenue dipped by 2.5 per cent year-on-year to £131.9 million.

The decline in revenues reflected a reduction in prepay mobile subscribers and the lower mobile termination rates which was introduced in April. Its net disconnections in the quarter for prepay was 196,100, which reflected its decision not to focus on prepay customers due to higher churn and lower overall lifetime value, it claimed.

Meanwhile, Virgin Media’s cable business also grew during the period with 41,700 new customers. ARPU also increased by 5.3 per cent to £45.01. Churn for its cable operations was at a record low of 1.1 per cent.

Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett said: "This quarter, we added cable customers at our fastest ever rate. A combination of higher gross additions, low churn and increased ARPU enabled us to deliver year-on-year cable revenue growth for the fourth consecutive quarter.

"We are developing our services to exploit our natural network advantage, both now and in the future. More customers than ever before are choosing faster broadband and every day millions of our customers are enjoying the benefits of the video-on-demand revolution we are leading.

"Finally, we have completed the last step of the refinancing of our debt, leaving us with a long term ‘fit for purpose’ capital structure that supports our ambitions to lead the market as the digital provider of choice."

Palm Pre sales are rubbish

Palm Pre sales have been a disaster, claim staff in O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores. This follows news that Palm is to be put up for sale. Many stores have registering zero sales.
An O2 spokesperson said: “Palm Pre sales are in line with our expectations.”

But one store manager said “Our store has sold hardly any Palm Pres, It never stood a chance against the iPhone and they both advertise themselves as doing the same things”.

A Carphone staffer added: “It is a good device but it doesn’t really have a place in the market. No one knows who Palm is.  So Nokia, Sony Ericsson and the iPhone will always be preferred.”

The Pre is available exclusively on O2 contracts. It was also launched on a premium £35 per month tariff but has since become free on all tariffs to “shift stock” staff claim. According to O2 forums, sales were so low many smaller stores stopped selling the Pre. Other shop staff have reported software and hardware issues including freezing, poor battery life, and faults with its slide track.